Somehow, Marissa’s idea of Not A Big Deal did not seem to match what her friends thought, because now there were exploding cookies everywhere. The snickerdoodle in her hands turned into a cloud of crumbs. Marissa gave a small surprised squeak followed by a sad little sound when he realized her cookie was gone. The crumbs were all over her bare legs now; she really should have changed. Now she felt crummy and was literally covered in crumbs and had no cookies. Maybe it was time to call it quits and just go to bed.

It became clear to her that she’d shared more than she realized about her encounter. She hadn’t meant to tell them the cliff notes of what Camilla had said to her; it just slipped out. It was accurate. Camilla had definitely called her that without ever saying it. Marissa wanted to make some kind of feeble argument, point out that everyone said that about her, but she decided it wouldn’t do much good. Plus, it was different when people said it as a joke or light heartedly. Camilla said it and meant to hurt her over basically nothing. Marissa still wasn’t sure what it was even about. For all Camilla knew, she’d just been referencing her and Elijah’s kiss in the show, which the Cetus had already seen.

Ruben and Rose seemed to somehow pump each other up, which wasn’t a good thing. It was absolutely not a good thing for the two of them to be each other’s violent hype person. They weren’t like Emmett, who punched Lucien once and then accepted the consequences for that. They’d be sneaky (or maybe not; she couldn’t imagine calling Ruben sneaky and meaning it) and it’d just be terrible.

“I don’t think it was about that,” Marissa managed to mumble to Rose as she finished brushing the remains of her lost snickerdoodle off of her legs. The hitting and the name calling had definitely been because of Elijah, not Danny. Plus, they’d already known Danny liked Marissa more than Camilla. The red-head told Rose everything, and this had been no exception. Once she’d felt less mopey about the whole thing, Marissa told Rose that Danny called things off with her and Camilla. She’d told Rose that Danny admitted spending time with her had involved more feelings than he expected. They knew that Danny liked Marissa more, and Marissa thought he knew how she felt, too. Danny needed time to figure things out, and Marissa wasn’t a relationship person, so for now, they were just part of a weird mess that was way more fun when there had been making out involved.

“Look, guys,” Marissa uncurled herself from the chair and stretched her legs. She looked between the two. “Please don’t- I can see the gears of revenge turning in your heads. Leave Camilla alone. You can’t do anything to Camilla, okay? I’m the sad, hurt person here, and I don’t want that. I, um, forbid it, okay?” She managed a small smile. “It’s really sweet that you guys care so much but she was just repeating what people say about me all the time. It’s not like you can go get revenge on everyone who’s said something rude about me. …that’s not a challenge, by the way.”

It was entirely unsurprising that Marissa hadn’t hit Camilla back; it had been clear that Ruben didn’t know her very well when he’d asked. Of the two girls, Rose was infinitely more likely to punch... more

Still fuming at the opposite half of the room as if the now cookie-particle-clogged air had become some kind of enemy, Ruben listened with only partial attention to Rose's rant. Not that the other... more